341ml bottle, day 7 of the 2016 Seasons Greetings holiday mixer from Parallel 49 and Central City - I like her mistletoe earrings.

This beer pours a clear, pale salmon amber colour, with one finger of puffy, very loosely foamy, and fizzy pink-tinged head, which leaves very little in the way of lace anywhere near the glass as it quickly blows off.

It smells of musty and slightly sour cherries, grainy and crackery pale malt, the wheat crackers that my toddler ate his weight in last night as a 'snack', a softly funky yeastiness, stale lemons, and an indeterminate earthy bitterness. The taste is gritty and grainy pale malt, some edgy wheatiness, a much lessened tart cherry essence, some growing lemon acerbity, consistent yeasty funk, and more rather weak leafy, earthy, and floral green hoppiness.

The carbonation is quite understated in its merely supportive frothiness, the body a so-so medium weight, and smooth enough, I suppose, at least for this sort of thing. It finishes off-dry, the malt and mixed fruity esters not really leaning that heavily towards the sour/tart end of the spectrum.

Overall, this is a serviceable version of a fruit or Berliner Weisse beer, but together there seems to be something lacking - let's just call it character. Halfway through a small offering and I'm getting bored watching myself type, so that should tell you all you need to know here.

A: hazy and red. I almost want to say pink, but it's more of a pale red, if that makes sense. About a finger of head that dissipated fairly quickly leaving just a bit of lacing around the rim of the glass.
S: Hm. A hint of something sour and fruity. I'm not sure I would be able to tell it were cherry from the smell - I'm picking up a more general red fruit/berry smell.
T: While most fruit beers are sweet, and sometimes sickeningly so, this is tart, sour and crisp.
F: A bit thin and very bubbly.

Appearance . Pours a nice looking, hazy peach-pink colour with almost a finger of white head that fades pretty quickly.

Smell. Sweet and sour cherries, some sweet wheat and a little lactic sourness. There's a slight soapy smell that's not all that nice.

Taste. Light red cherries and some of that soapiness I was smelling which has a bit more of a mineral flavour than the smell. There's some sourness and some wheat there, but that light strange soapy/borax taste really isn't working for me.

Mouthfeel. Lighter body with medium-low carbonation that's not as fine and lively as others I've tried and doesn't seem true to the style.

Overall. A bit of a letdown for sure. Was really wanting to enjoy this one but it's just not very tasty.

M: Clean, dry and crisp with medium carbonation that pin pricks the tongue and accentuates the mineralness.

O: Refreshing and crisp, it is nice to see breweries trying this older style, especially at lower ABV. It would have been nice to get more cherries on the nose and flavour, while it clearly had red fruit, I wasn't able to detect what kind.

Normally I enjoy Parallel 49's cute and whimsical labels, but I found this one to be too much and more of a throwback to the sexist beer attitude of the 80's. Not exactly inviting to all beer drinkers.

First off, I will say that I am a huge Parallel 49 fan and have been since more or less day one of the brewery. Living a short bike ride away has been a most excellent situation and I feel that they pretty much do everything right when it comes to their releases - from the maple bourbon stout to the seedspitter and everything in between, I've never been disappointed even when it's not a beer style I'm usually fond of.

That being said, this one disappointed me for sure. Maybe it's not them but me, because this has happened before with German sours. I absolutely adore sour ales typically, but I have noticed that the ones I have not liked have all been German in style.

The colour is most excellent, with the cherries having a huge influence in making everything bright pinkish red. The head is very very light pink, almost white. Smell has less cherry than I would have thought, especially based on the colour. Instead there is what smells more like apricot to me and a mustiness like rotten fruit. Despite the bright colour, the smell is rather dank.

Taking a sip affirms the dank, musty character - with a heavy undercurrent of this lactic, dull sourness that is not at all puckering but is still almost overwhelming the flavour. The cherries haven't stepped up to the plate at all here, and leaving the beer unbalanced in my eyes. The rotten flavour is more like decomposing straw now. I realize this sound horrific, but even an excellent sour is described by grim adjectives like "musty" and "grandma's attic" so don't think it's as bad as it sounds - but there is something about it that I just don't care for.

I am a pretty big fan of Parallel 49's stuff. Seeing that they had a sour cherry in this style made me so pleased that I just had to buy it...and that was as far as my excitement went. I'm not entirely sure if I got an off bottle or not, but reading reviews on other websites, I'm going to guess that, no, I did not. Something funky happened with this beer and I'm not sure what.

A - It was really pretty. Poured a nice hazy red color; pretty much what I expected.

S - This is where it began to go downhill for me. The smell was so off-putting that I almost didn't even want to put it into my mouth. No cherry on the nose for me, or anyone else that I allowed to give it a try. Sort of smelled like really bad rotten fruit mixed with sour ocean water?

T - Even worse than the smell. Again, it was rotten fruit, with sea water. Kind of reminded me of how I imagine decaying barnacles might taste like. If they rolled in fruit first.

M - Probably it's only redeeming quality. Was smooth and could have been easy to drink if it wasn't as foul as it was.

O - I wasn't really expecting anything from this beer when I bought it. I'd hoped for cherry, but it wasn't there. It almost feels like something happened with the yeast. I MIGHT try another bottle since it was cheap ($5.50) or try to find a sample on tap somewhere and then edit this review. But for now, I would definitely not recommend this beer to anyone. If you can pass it around a circle of metal heads who are all up on their beer and every single person in the group either spat it out or would have rather washed it down with some pil, there's an issue.

Keep in mind that this brewery IS a good brewer though. Just this one went really really wrong.

Oh good, I was hoping someone else would review this beer so I wouldn't have to go through all the exciting BA new review steps.

Yeah, so this beer is basically a sour-yet-sessionable German-style beer, containing sour cherries (maybe? So they say, anyway). To my great shame, I've only had one other beer in this style (Bear Republic's Tartare), which I've found pretty amazing in terms of sourness, yet at the same time, a really poor Berliner-Weisse (ie. it was so much more insanely sour than normal Berliner-Weisse beers).

This P49 beer seemed to be fairly spot on in terms of style: it's a really crisp, easily drinkable, sour(ish) ale, with a pretty low abv (4.4% abv) making it absolutely amazing for sessionable events (like wanting to chug a growler of this type of beer - that counts as an event, right?)

My one complaint about this beer is that the sour cherry doesn't really come through at all. The taste is very lactic, which doesn't really bother me, but if you're expecting something fruity and sour cherry-related, this beer will probably disappoint. Go into this beer expecting a lactically pleasing, easily drinkable mild sour (and I do mean easily drinkable - you'll be able to solo growlers of this stuff)

At the same time, Bear Republic's Tartare was insanely more sour (seriously, it was rivaling some Cantillon material), and seemed to be really well received so I'm hoping this beer does just as well. Basically, if sour beers were always kinda scary to you, you should probably check this beer out: it's a pretty amazing bridge between easily-drinkable and the die-hard masses.

Edit:
Disclaimer: I had this beer right when it was released, in a growler. Pretty much everyone I've talked to said this beer is horrible, so maybe something happened during their bottling process, or as the beer started to age. Regardless, I remember it being a pretty nice, easy drinking beer, so I'll keep this rating up. I would probably recommend avoiding it nowadays, though.